Running is a means and never merely an end

Long run Sunday! Did our run at Croft State Park. Honestly I kind of hated the trails there (bad footing, super windy, wide enough for one person) but hey its good to get off the sidewalks and its always a cool thing to change it up.

Workout today at Milliken Park. 2 mile warm up to the start line. We did a really interesting workout of like continuous rolling repeats...we would do a 2000m interval (mine at target 6:50 mile pace), then the rest would be a 100ish meter jog over to the big hill (200 meters or so), and then 4 hill sprints with a jog back down, then jogged back to the start for the 2k repeats, and rolled into the next interval. All together 1 set of the hills and 2k was like 2.10 miles. We did 3. The 2nd and 3rd 2k repeats were actually really difficult after the hills. I felt like I was having to put a lotttt of effort in just to keep consistent splits. But I pretty consistently stayed at 6:45-50 mile pace, so that was good. I'm really pleased with the way our workouts have been going lately. They have been challenging, but I feel like we have handled them really well. Just feels like I am getting better every day. 2 mile cool down back to the cars afterwards.

Weights session later that evening. Once again, too many dang squats.

50 minute recovery run. Did my core.

Workout at Milliken again today. 2 mile warm up, then 40 minutes of 10 hard, 5 easy, 10 hard, 5 easy, 10 hard. That amounted to 5.26 miles. Our hard was just supposed to be a steady solid effort but nothing too bad, and each 10 minute sesh should be harder than the last. I paced those 3 at about 7:26, 7:14, 7:08 pace. Easy pace was a nice conversational jog, around 8:45 pace. We averaged out sub-8 though. 1.2 mile cool down + a few strides.

Weights sesh around dinner time. 

Speaking of dinner time, I have GOT to start eating better. I guarentee I could drop like at least 15 seconds off my 5k time if I just had better portion control and also ate less dessert. I say this to myself around this time every night, but now that it's in writing....I really gotta work on it haha.

Easy recovery run. Had fun exploring around Converse's campus. Nice place!

Left WoCo at about 1:30 today for our ETSU meet this weekend. We went on a little shakeout run when we got there, 30 minutes easy around campus + some strides. I'm running my first indoor 5k tomorrow! Need to gather my thoughts

My race was the first race of the day - first thing in the morning at 8am. We left the hotel by about 6:45 and got there at like 7:10, so I was a little rushed to warm up but it was alright. I was really happy to have the first race of the day, first off so that I wouldn't just sit there and think too much about it all day like I probably would have, and second of all so that I could really enjoy the rest of the day without worry. 

Well it was 18 laps. So that was pretty crazy because I've never ran that far on a track before. I guess I didn't take that into account like at all because I have ran a jillion 5k's....just never on a track. I was hoping for sub-19 today, which I didn't even think was a very ambitious goal. I was on pace for the first mile, ahead of pace actually, and came through at 6:06 I think. After that, with like 11 laps to go, I realized how long this race was. I think that really started to get to me mentally which is probably why my splits showed that I slowed down so much at that point. My last 800 was pretty good, but basically everything between that last 8 and that first mile was just a lost cause. I don't really know what happened, but I know it was definitely mental. I feel like I prepared as well as I could have mentally beforehand, but I guess I just didn't really know what I was preparing for. So now that I have this one under my belt, hopefully I'll be able to mentally prepare better for the next one.

20 minute cool down with my dad afterwards. I was really happy that he showed up to cheer me on - he woke up at like 5am just to drive over for that 20 minute race. :)